1936 | An American Indian model of the Universe |
p.246 | p.246 | 3917 | Scientific thought is essentially a specialised part of Indo-European languages |
Full Idea: What we call "scientific thought" is a specialisation of the western Indo-European type of language. | |||
From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.246) | |||
A reaction: This is the beginnings of an absurd extreme relativist view of science, based on a confusion about meaning and thought. |
p.57 | p.57 | 3915 | The Hopi have no concept of time as something flowing from past to future |
Full Idea: A Hopi has no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate, out of a future, through a present, into a past. | |||
From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.57) | |||
A reaction: If true, this would not so much support relativism of language as the view that that conception of time is actually false. |
p.63 | p.63 | 3916 | Hopi consistently prefers verbs and events to nouns and things |
Full Idea: Hopi, with its preference for verbs, as contrasted to our own liking for nouns, perpetually turns our propositions about things into propositions about events. | |||
From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.63) | |||
A reaction: This should provoke careful thought about ontology - without concluding that it is entirely relative to language. |
1936 | Punctual and segmentive Hopi verbs |
p.55 | p.55 | 3914 | Language arranges sensory experience to form a world-order |
Full Idea: Language first of all is a classification and arrangement of the stream of sensory experience which results in a certain world-order. | |||
From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (Punctual and segmentive Hopi verbs [1936], p.55) | |||
A reaction: This is only true to a limited degree. See Davidson's 'On the very idea of a conceptual scheme'. All humans share a world-order, to some extent. |